What Is and Is Not Urgent

It is unlikely that the message in the last email you read was urgent. Only a tiny percentage of your email requires your immediate attention. Most are not urgent, and many are not even important.

It is even less likely that the last web page you browsed had information that you needed to know. Regardless of the information you found, it probably wasn’t significant enough to deserve your attention at that moment.

The funny, entertaining, or political Facebook post you slowed down to view had nothing of real value or substance to offer you. It likely either confirmed your political opinions or reminded you that some people have very different ideas when it comes to politics. It wasn’t urgent that you receive the message, whatever it may have been. It is likely that it was entertaining, though.

The constant drip of information in all its forms is designed to make you feel like it deserves your immediate attention. If your inbox isn’t open at all times, how will you know when you receive an email? If you don’t check the websites you regularly follow, how will you know when something new and exciting is posted? And if you’re not glued to the social media platforms, well then you aren’t very social, are you?

None of these things are urgent. Here is what is urgent.

Urgent

If you don’t pick up the phone and call your prospective clients now, you will not schedule the appointments that eventually result in new opportunities being created. The work that you fail to do with urgency today won’t hurt you today, but it will hurt you four weeks, or four months, or one year from now. Eventually, it will hurt you.

If you don’t nurture your coldest dream clients, the most strategic, high visibility, high-value customers now, they will not know you when they have a compelling reason to change. The longer you wait to begin developing those relationships, the worse it is for you. If you don’t nurture those accounts today, with urgency, you will pay a high price later.

If you don’t follow-up on every opportunity now, your neglect will indicate a lack of interest in truly serving your prospective clients. They’re not going to call you to tell you that they recognize your lack of interest. But a year from now, when you finally get around to following up, you’ll find out that they are working with your competitor.

Much of what we do each has zero urgency. It’s mostly distractions. There is no price to pay for ignoring these things.

What doesn’t feel urgent needs to be done with a greater sense of urgency, because the cost of not taking action now is immense.

Responding to an email in a few hours is not going to cause you very much trouble. Not prospecting is going to cost you big time.

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